an american expat living in the netherlands

Mexico

June 10, 20140 comment

Last week Piet and I packed up our sunscreen, tank tops, and Alka-Seltzer and flew to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for 7 days. We booked an all inclusive, adults only (get your mind out of the gutter!) resort for the entire stay, and it was fabulous! The resort was apparently smaller than some, but it still boasted seven on site restaurants, three bar /lounge areas, and one coffee shop. Do I even need to tell you that we ate until our tummies exploded? Enter stage left – the Alka-Seltzer.

As we normally end up doing on vacation, we wanted to see some hard-to-reach places. We opt to take public transport – realize its going to be difficult via said public transport – have a stress induced argument – then opt to rent a car despite unreasonable budget we have set for ourself – realize we should just ALWAYS rent a car for a day or two when on vacation – then drive to before mentioned hard-to-reach places and have an amazing time.

First of all, the zoo was a strange mix of fun, sadness, and guilt all wrapped up in a heavy blanket of hot humidity. The conditions are sad, animals in very small pens and some in environments they are not suited for. We saw a grey wolf in the tropical Mexican weather. He was limp and lifeless just laying on his side. On the other hand, you can feed and pet almost all the animals there. OK…maybe I wasn’t technically supposed to touch them, but given the lack of supervision and wide gaps between bars I touched: a giraffes tongue, a baboons hand, a jaguar & lions back, various pigs, parrot beaks, and more.

On the other side of the coin was the botanical garden. This was an unexpected delight! I will leave it to the photos on this on.

All in all it was a great trip and a desperately needed break for the two of us. We came home rested, burned to a crisp, and with an extra bag full of irresistible souvenirs.